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Problems of Poverty: An Inquiry into the Industrial Condition of the Poor. J. A. Hobson
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isbn 4057664571533
Автор произведения J. A. Hobson
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Though the method of assessing companies as if they were single persons renders it impossible to obtain accurate information in recent years as to the number of persons enjoying incomes of various sizes, a comparison made by Mr. Mulhall of incomes in 1867 and 1895 indicates that, while the lower middle-class is growing rapidly, the number of the rich is growing still more rapidly. While incomes of £100 to £300 have grown by a little more than 50 per cent., those from £300 to £1000 have nearly doubled, those between £1000 and £5000 have more than doubled, and incomes over £5000 have more than trebled.
But though such comparisons justify the conclusion that the upper grades of skilled labour have made considerable advances, and that the lower grades of regular unskilled labourers have to a less degree shared in this advance, they do not warrant the optimist conclusion often drawn from them, that poverty is a disease which left alone will cure itself, and which, in point of fact, is curing itself rapidly. Before we consent to accept the evidence of improvement in the average condition of the labouring classes during the last half century as sufficient evidence to justify this opinion we ought to pay regard to the following considerations--
1. It should be remembered that a comparison between England of the present day with England in the decade 1830–1840 is eminently favourable to a theory of progress. The period from 1790 to 1840 was the most miserable epoch in the history of the English working-classes. Much of the gain must be rightly regarded rather as a recovery from sickness, than as a growth in normal health. If the decade 1730–1740, for example, were to be taken instead, the progress of the wage-earner, especially in southern England, would be by no means so obvious. The southern agricultural labourer and the whole body of low-skilled workers were probably in most respects as well off a century and a half ago as they are to-day.
2. The great fall of prices, due to cheapening of production and of transport during the last twenty years, benefits the poor far less than the rich. For, while the prices of most comforts and luxuries have fallen very greatly, the same is not true of most necessaries. The gain to the workers is chiefly confined to food prices, which have fallen some 40 per cent since 1880. Taking the retail prices of foods consumed by London working-class families we find that since 1880 the price of flour has fallen about 60 per cent., bread falling a little more than half that amount; the prices of beef and mutton have fallen nearly to the same extent as flour, though bacon stands in 1903 just about where it stood in 1880. Sugar exhibits a deep drop until 1898, rising afterwards in consequence of the war tax and the Sugar Convention; tea shows a not considerable drop. Other groceries, such as coffee and cocoa, and certain vegetables are cheaper. A careful inquiry into clothing shows a trifling fall of price for articles of the same quality, while the introduction of cheaper qualities has enabled workers to effect some saving here. Against these must be set a slight rise in price of dairy produce, a considerable rise in fuel, and a large rise in rent. A recent estimate of the Board of Trade, having regard to food, rent, clothing, fuel, and lighting as chief ingredients of working-class expenditure, indicates that 100 shillings will in 1900 do the work for which 120 shillings were required in 1880. The great fall of prices has been in the period 1880–1895, since then prices all round (except in clothing) show a considerable rise.
In turning from the working-classes as a whole to the poor, it becomes evident that the most substantial benefit they have received from falling prices is cheap bread. Cheap groceries and lighting are also gains, though it must be remembered that the modes of purchase to which the very poor are driven to have recourse minimize these gains. On clothes the poor spend a very small proportion of their incomes, the very poor virtually nothing. In the case of the lowest classes of the towns, it is probable that the rise in rents offsets all the advantages of cheapened prices for other commodities.
The importance of the bearing of this fact is obvious. Even were it clearly proved that the wages of the working-classes were increasing faster in proportion than the incomes of the wealthier classes, it would not be thereby shown that the standard of comfort in the former was rising as fast as the standard of comfort in the latter. If we confine the term "poor" to the lower grades of wage-earners, it would probably be correct to say that the riches of the rich had increased at a more rapid rate than that at which the poverty of the poor had diminished. Thus the width of the gap between riches and poverty would be absolutely greater than before. But, after all, such absolute measurements as these are uncertain, and have little other than a rhetorical value. What is important to recognize is this, that though the proportion of the very poor to the whole population has somewhat diminished, never in the whole history of England, excepting during the disastrous period at the beginning of this century, has the absolute number of the very poor been so great as it is now. Moreover, the massing of the poor in large centres of population, producing larger areas of solid poverty, presents new dangers and new difficulties in the application of remedial measures.
However we may estimate progress, one fact we must recognize, that the bulk of our low-skilled workers do not yet possess a secure supply of the necessaries of life. Few will feel inclined to dispute what Professor Marshall says on this point--
"The necessaries for the efficiency of an ordinary agricultural or of an unskilled town labourer and his family, in England, in this generation, may be said to consist of a well-drained dwelling with several rooms, warm clothing, with some changes of underclothing, pure water, a plentiful supply of cereal food, with a moderate allowance of meat and milk, and a little tea, &c.; some education, and some recreation; and lastly, sufficient freedom for his wife from other work to enable her to perform properly her maternal and her household duties. If in any district unskilled labour is deprived of any of these things, its efficiency will suffer in the same way as that of a horse which is not properly tended, or a steam-engine which has an inadequate supply of coals."[10]
There is one final point of deep significance. So far we have endeavoured to measure poverty by the application of a standard of actual material comfort. But this, while furnishing a fair gauge of the deprivation suffered by the poor, does not enable us to measure it as a social danger. There is a depth of poverty, of misery, of ignorance, which is not dangerous because it has no outlook, and is void of hope. Abate the extreme stress of poverty, give the poor a glimpse of a more prosperous life, teach them to know their power, and the danger of poverty increases. This is what De Tocqueville meant when writing of France, before the Revolution, he said, "According as prosperity began to dawn in France, men's minds appeared to become more unquiet and disturbed; public discontent was sharpened, hatred of all ancient institutions went on increasing, till the nation was visibly on the verge of a revolution. One might almost say that the French found their condition all the more intolerable according as it became better."[11]
So in England the change of industrial conditions which has massed the poor in great cities, the spread of knowledge by compulsory education, cheap newspapers, libraries, and a thousand other vehicles of knowledge, the possession and growing appreciation of political power, have made poverty more self-conscious and the poor more discontented. By striving to educate, intellectually, morally, sanitarily, the poor, we have made them half-conscious of many needs they never recognized before. They were once naked, and